WHAT CAN I DO HERE?

NOTE: This help page applies to both LifeTopix (and other classic LightArrow apps) as well as to LightArrow Organizer for iOS and Mac. So, the screenshots and directions may vary slightly based on the app you’re using.

IMPORTANT: If you’re setting up sync between our iOS app and Mac app, please make sure that the sync is first setup on our iOS app. Mac sync setup should be done after the iOS sync setup.

1. Dropbox™ and iCloud™ cloud services are recommended for device-to-device sync. Box™ is also supported for sync. Support for Google Drive™ and Microsoft OneDrive™ currently have experimental support.

2. Keep in mind that LightArrow apps only sync when they are open. You can see when the apps are syncing by viewing the green circle around the LightArrow logo on your main screen.

3. The advantage of using Dropbox for sync instead of iCloud is then a single setup allows for both sync and full online backups that can be restored from. If you use iCloud for syncing, then you still have to set up Dropbox for doing online backups. LightArrow highly recommends its users to do regular online backups and email backups from the app.

4. All syncing devices must be updated to the latest version of the app available on the App Store.

If you are trying to perform a sync reset, please scroll below to see that section.

VIDEO: Sync Using Dropbox or Other File Services

VIDEO: Sync Using iCloud

PREREQUISITES

Before you enable sync on your devices, ensure that all of the following requirements are met:

Each device you wish to sync has network (WiFi) connectivity for the initial sync setup.

If you plan to take advantage of the built-in integration your LightArrow app has with your device’s Contacts, Calendar and Reminders apps, please make sure you have those syncing in the iOS Settings app utilizing Apple’s iCloud. Our app does not sync those, but expects them to be synced between your devices.

For the cloud service you wish to use (Dropbox, Box, etc.), make sure you have an account and you know the username and password, and install their app (for example the Dropbox app) on each device, and make sure you can connect.

If using our iCloud Sync Beta preview, make sure iCloud is enabled in the device Settings of each device you wish to sync.

ENABLING SYNC — SUMMARY

The first time you enable sync on your devices, all the LightArrow app data from the PRIMARY DEVICE will be copied to the other devices — no merging of data will initially occur. However, once you enable sync on your devices, modifications on one device will be propagated to the other devices. The Primary Device is the one which in your opinion has the best data for our app, since it’ll be used as the baseline for the other devices.

How to enable sync on your primary device:

PRIMARY DEVICE: Go to Settings -> Backup, Restore & Sync. You need to create and set an online folder here. The most popular case is to use Dropbox, so these directions use that as the example. Tap on Backup/Sync online folder (in bottom section). Tap New on the pop-up. A view called “New Online Folder” comes up – tap on the File Service field. Now, the file service should have Dropbox already selected (you can change it to Box for example, but let’s stay with Dropbox – tap on Close in the selector that has come up. In the Email field, type in your Dropbox account email (for example, busybean1222@gmail.com). Tap on Sign In – a popup comes up saying you will have to use the exact same email address if a Dropbox login page comes up – tap on Proceed. You will either directly get a view that asks you to allow the app to be able to use Dropbox (in which case tap Allow), or a view that asks you to enter your Dropbox account email and password – in which case enter those (for example, busybean1222@gmail.com and password), login, then allow access. You should now be back in the “New Online Folder” view. Tap on the gear icon to the right of the Folder field. Tap on your email address, then tap Select (you’d only need to tap on Browse here if in the less common case, you have already gone to Dropbox directly and created a folder yourself for app backups, for example “AppBackups” – in which case you’d need to Browse, and then Select that one). Once you have tapped on Select, you will again be back in the “New Online Folder” view. Tap Save on the top right. Tap Save AGAIN on the popup (it should be showing your newly created folder with a checkmark next to it).

PRIMARY DEVICE: Tap on the Backup email address field, and type in an email address of yours that you wish to send email backups to, and save it.

PRIMARY DEVICE: Now tap on Online Backup. Let it complete.

PRIMARY DEVICE: Now tap on Email Backup. Let it complete and send the email to yourself.

PRIMARY DEVICE: Enable Sync: Go into Configure Sync. Tap on Manage under Dropbox Sync. Tap on the ON/OFF slider in the Sync field to set it to ON. Tap Continue, then read what the alert says – it needs to report itself as the first device for the PRIMARY DEVICE. If it is not, cancel and contact support@lightarrow.com, and we’ll help you. If correct, continue, let it complete, and tap OK.

PRIMARY DEVICE: Go all the way back to the Settings view, and then go to the Recent view (accessible from the left column of dashboard navigation icons). Leave the app up in this view – you may see a green circle spinning around the white dot icon on the top left of the screen. Let it complete spinning. For good measure, do a pulldown to refresh in the Recent view (put your finger anywhere in the content area of the Recently Updated view, pull down 2-3 inches, then release). You will see the green circle spin around again for a few seconds on the top left. That indicates things are either being pushed up to Dropbox, or being pulled down and consumed – basically, the sync operation. Also, below, whenever we say pull-down-to-refresh for the Recent view to force a sync, you can alternatively go to the Settings view and tap on Sync Now.

Now we are ready to enable sync on the other devices.

How to enable sync on your secondary device(s):

SECONDARY DEVICE(S): You can either create and set the same online folder here, or consume the Email Backup that we sent above from the primary device. Steps: If you want to create from scratch, follow step 1 of the PRIMARY DEVICE case exactly. A common mistake users make is they tap Browse (instead of tapping Select), see a folder called LifeTopixSync, and select that. That is a mistake, as the LifeTopixSync folder is something we create UNDER the folder you point to (your Dropbox root folder represented by your email address). If you choose the simpler approach (consuming the Email Backup): open your iOS Mail application (it does not work with the gmail app). Find the backup email sent from the PRIMARY DEVICE. Be careful – do a tap-and-hold on the attachment icon lifetopix.backup.xml (instead of a tap), and then choose to open with our app. Your app will come up. Go to the Settings -> Backup, Restore & Sync view, and tap on Restore from Inbox. Let it complete.

SECONDARY DEVICE(S): Enable Sync: go into Configure Sync. Tap on Manage under Dropbox Sync. Tap on the ON/OFF slider in the Sync field to ON. Tap Continue, then read what the alert says – it needs to report that the cloud already contains data from your PRIMARY DEVICE. If it reports itself as the first device, cancel and contact support@lightarrow.com, and we’ll help you. If correct, continue, let it complete and tap OK.

You are all done! Go all the way back to the Settings view, and then to the Recent view. Watch for the green circle spinning at the top left of the screen to complete, and then do a pull-down to refresh.

Now when you make changes, they’ll go back and forth. Sync happens automatically every minute or so when the app is up. You can always do a pull-down-to-refresh in the Recent view to force a sync.

DISABLING SYNC

When you disable sync on a device, any changes you make to the app’s data on that device will get overwritten with whatever is in the cloud at the time when you later re-enable sync on that device. The bottom line is that unless you are disabling sync on a device as part of the process to reset sync or you do not wish your device to be synced with other devices any more, you should not disable Cloud Sync.

RESETTING SYNC

PRIMARY DEVICE: Tap on Sync Reset. Complete the steps. IMPORTANT: this is only done on one device after ALL devices sync have been disabled.

VERY, VERY IMPORTANT! Before moving to step 5, please log into your Dropbox account via a browser on a PC/Mac, and verify that under the LifeTopixSync folder, there is no folders called devices and/or baseline. If there are, delete those (only devices and/or baseline) by right-click (2-finger click on Mac) and choosing Delete from the popup. Leave the SYNC_UUID_DEFAULT folder and its contents alone.

Follow the steps as above to enable sync in the primary device first, and then the secondary devices.

SYNC RESET VIDEO

IMPORTANT NOTES FOR ICLOUD USERS

In your device Settings, Apple provides you a mechanism to “manage storage” for your iCloud account and for the applications that access it. It is very important that you not utilize this interface to manipulate the iCloud storage for your LightArrow app. If you wish to manage the iCloud storage for your LightArrow app, utilize the operations provided for you in your LightArrow app Settings.

I’m trying to set up syncing for the first time, I want to use your Dropbox method, and your help instructions state “PRIMARY DEVICE: Go to Set­tings -> Backup, Restore & Sync”.
The problem is, I’m using an iPad and, unless I’m missing something, there’s no option called “backup” under the iPad Settings (or the Dropbox settings, since your instructions aren’t clear), let alone any drop-down called “Restore & Sync”. I’ve had a good look around and can’t even get to first base !
Help

1. Our help instructions for Backup/Sync are referring to the “Settings” section in our App. (Open our App and tap on the gear icon in the left navigation bar to go to our “Settings” view). You will see a “Backup, Restore & Sync” option in our Settings view.
2. We assume you have the latest version of our app. Can you please check the Apple “App Store” App to make sure you have the latest version of our App?

Hi,
I’ve been using LifeTopix more heavily this week (I think I’m finally getting my head round it) and I have noticed that the sync happens every time I open the app, frequently while I’m using it and also whenever I make any changes.
As a result, the app seems to run quite slowly for some of the time and I am having to charge my iPod every day, when I would normally only charge it every few days.
I have it set to sync and backup with Dropbox, although I only use it on the one device at the moment (I may get a new phone at some point and will probably try out the Mac app/Air Access soon).
I noticed in my Dropbox folder there are a large number of XML files in the LifeTopix folder (don’t worry, I didn’t mess with them!).
Are these files incremental or full backups of the LifeTopix database?
Do you have any plans to make the sync quicker and/or improve battery usage?
Thanks,
Tim

Yes, sync gets triggered every 50 seconds to see if there are any incremental changes available locally or remotely and copies/moves the incremental change (XML) files appropriately.

We are continuously working on improving our sync. Just like almost every cloud sync implementation, we move incremental change files over the network and that causes the device to use Wifi or cellular network and may drain the device battery much more than otherwise.

It appears that LifeTopix sync is fully supported with Drop­box™ and Box™ cloud ser­vices at the present time (with the other cloud offerings in beta status). Without causing a favoritism uproar, would you be comfortable advising your readers as to whether either Dropbox or Box seems to work more reliably than the other? Since you undoubtedly hear about any problems, does one of these give you guys more trouble than the other?

Our help pages are constantly updated. Currently, we do not have a way to display change timestamps on each of them.

In our testing, we’ve seen that Dropbox, Box and iCloud all work properly. Since we have supported Dropbox cloud service option the longest, we recommend it over the others.
However, our users have their own preferences. Users who insist on using Box and iCloud are also supported by us.

Should you have any fur­ther questions/suggestions, do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us again (support@lightarrow.com).